It is right that man should love those who have offended him. He will do so when he remembers that all men are his relations, and that it is through ignorance and involuntarily that they sin,and then we all die so soon.

The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying I will not forgive. A forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against the man.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise, it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.

Alas! if my best Friend, who laid down His life for me, were to remember all the instances in which I have neglected Him, and to plead them against me in judgment, where should I hide my guilty head in the day of recompense? I will pray, therefore, for blessings on my friends, even though they cease to be so, and upon my enemies, though they continue such.

There is an ugly kind of forgiveness in this world,a kind of hedgehog forgiveness, shot out like quills. Men take one who has offended, and set him down before the blowpipe of their indignation, and scorch him, and burn his fault into him; and when they have kneaded him sufficiently with their fiery fists, then they forgive him.

The brave only know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at. Cowards have done good and kind actions,cowards have even fought, nay, sometimes even conquered; but a coward never forgave. It is not in his nature; the power of doing it flows only from a strength and greatness of soul, conscious of its own force and security, and above the little temptations of resenting every fruitless attempt to interrupt its happiness.

The gospel comes to the sinner at once with nothing short of complete forgiveness as the starting point of all his efforts to be holy. It does not say, Go and sin no more, and I will not condemn thee. It says at once, Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more.

Behold affronts and indignities which the world thinks it right never to pardon, which the Son of God endures with a divine meekness! Let us cast at the feet of Jesus that false honor, that quick sense of affronts, which exaggerates everything, and pardons nothing, and, above all, that devilish determination in resenting injuries.

How sure we are of our own forgiveness from God. How certain we are that we are made in His image, when we forgive heartily and out of hand one who has wronged us. Sentimentally we may feel, and lightly we may say, To err is human, to forgive divine; but we never taste the nobility and divinity of forgiving till we forgive and know the victory of forgiveness over our sense of being wronged, over mortified pride and wounded sensibilities. Here we are in living touch with Him who treats us as though nothing had happenedwho turns His back upon the past, and bids us journey with Him into goodness and gladness, into newness of life.

In what a delightful communion with God does that man live who habitually seeketh love! With the same mantle thrown over him from the crosswith the same act of amnesty, by which we hope to be savedinjuries the most provoked, and transgressions the most aggravated, are covered in eternal forgetfulness.